Vapebeat

Jason Artman

What’s in Your Vape Survival Kit? Grab These Supplies Ahead of the Vapocalypse

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There’s no question that the vaping industry in the United States is on extremely shaky regulatory ground right now. The deadline for the FDA to process all outstanding premarket applications from the country’s vape juice makers has come and gone.

While there are many PMTAs that the FDA has yet to process, all of the responses issued by the agency so far have come in the form of marketing denial orders that appear to represent a de facto ban on all flavored e-liquids.

Although the lawsuits against the FDA are mounting, it currently looks as though our days of enjoying The Vape Life are numbered.

If you haven’t started building your vape survival kit in advance of the Vapocalypse, you probably should have begun long ago – but you’re not out of time yet. Although it’s possible that some form of open-system vaping will survive in light of the lawsuits that are now being piled on the FDA, you can’t assume that the vape gear and e-liquid you currently buy will still be available a year – or even a month – from now.

It’s entirely possible that there will soon be a point at which the only vaping products that you can buy easily are closed-system products like Vuse and JUUL. If you don’t want to go that route, you need to be building your vape survival kit right now.

Here’s what should be in it.

Supplies for DIY E-Liquid Making

If you’ve been following the latest news on vaping, you may be aware of the fact that the majority of the PMTAs that have been submitted to the FDA have been for e-liquids rather than vaping devices. Plenty of new devices and tanks have made their way to the United States, and for the time being, the FDA isn’t focusing its attention on hardware at all. E-liquid is getting all of the attention, and none of the attention is positive. In short, you can’t assume that your favorite e-liquid will remain readily available for long.

We’ll talk more about commercial e-liquid in a moment. For now, though, let’s discuss DIY e-liquid. Although you can certainly stock up on commercial e-liquid ahead of the Vapocalypse, buying enough vape juice for the next several years – which is something that you really should be thinking about – might be prohibitively expensive. DIY e-liquid supplies such as VG/PG bases and liquid nicotine, on the other hand, are actually surprisingly affordable to buy in bulk. That might not always be the case, though, because the FDA believes that it has regulatory authority over all products intended for vaping – even unflavored VG/PG bases. Stock up while you can. Flavors, however, are generally of lower concern because they’re marketed as food additives rather than vaping products.

Commercial E-Liquid

Although DIY e-liquid can be the thing that allows you to continue using an open-system vaping device if the FDA ultimately does ban all flavored vape juices, the fact is that you probably have certain favorite commercial e-liquids, and you’d be very sad if those e-liquids were to eventually go away. You should stock up on those e-liquids as much as you possibly can.

If you have the financial resources to buy more e-liquid than you’d be able to use in a year, consider storing your excess vape juice in the freezer to prolong its life as much as possible. In a potential future in which you’re getting by primarily with DIY e-liquid, it’ll be nice to know that you can dig a bottle out of the freezer once in a while when you’re missing your old favorite flavor.

Rebuildable Atomizer and Coil Building Supplies

If you prefer to vape with a traditional tank that uses pre-built coils, that’s completely understandable; tanks are far more popular than rebuildable atomizers within the vaping community. Many people find coil building tedious and would rather avoid it if possible. What would you do, though, if it suddenly became impossible to buy coils for your favorite tank – or any tank, for that matter?

It isn’t safe to assume that vape tanks will always be readily available in the United States. As we mentioned above, the FDA isn’t focusing its attention on vaping hardware right now. The agency has asserted, though, that all vaping hardware falls under its regulatory authority because all devices, tanks, and coils are intended to be used with nicotine.

It might be a good idea to stock up on replacement coils for your favorite vape tank, but the fact is that buying enough replacement coils to last several years would be even more cost-prohibitive than buying e-liquid. To prepare for a potential future in which tanks and coils are hard to find or not available at all, it would be a very good idea to buy a rebuildable atomizer right now – even if you hope that you’ll never need to use it. Although atomizers fall under the FDA’s regulatory authority, the basic supplies for coil building – kanthal wire and organic cotton – have many uses aside from vaping and will always be available.

Spare Vaping Devices

The final thing that you should think about as you prepare your vape survival kit is your vape mod. If you have a vaping device with a built-in battery, your device will only last as long as the battery holds a charge – so around a year from now, it’ll require replacement. A vaping device with a removable battery is more durable since you can replace the battery easily when it stops holding a charge. Even with the ability to replace the battery, though, the device will probably stop working eventually because one of the electronic components will fail.

This topic returns to a theme that we’ve mentioned more than once in this article. The FDA is focusing its attention on e-liquid right now, but all vaping devices are technical products that fall under the agency’s regulatory purview. With that in mind, it would be wise to grab a few spare vaping devices with removable batteries. That way, you’ll have some fallback options if vaping hardware ever becomes difficult to buy.

Vandy Vape Requiem RDA

The One Problem With Nicotine Salt E-Liquid Is…

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When nicotine salt e-liquid first hit the market a little over five years ago, it was heralded as one of the most important product developments in the history of vaping to date.

Being much smoother than freebase nicotine, nicotine salt made it possible for the first time to use a small low-wattage vaping device and still have a completely satisfying – even cigarette-like – vaping experience.

It seemed obvious that nicotine salts would one day become just as popular as freebase nicotine, if not more so.

So, what’s the one problem with nicotine salt e-liquid?

If you’ve been following the vaping industry for the past few years, you might already know the answer to that question.

The problem is that, particularly in the United States, e-liquid makers have done everything possible to keep nicotine salt e-liquid at a higher price point than freebase nicotine e-liquid.

Nicotine salt is no longer the new thing in the vaping industry, and it hasn’t been for quite some time. By now, it should be available in the same large, inexpensive bottles that owners of large mods buy whenever they need vape juice.

By now, it should be available in lower nicotine strengths. That’s especially the case considering the proliferation of more powerful pod mods – devices that are way too powerful even for “low-strength” 20 mg/ml nicotine salt e-liquids.

Why is it that e-liquid makers seem determined to keep nicotine salt stuck in 2018?

Let’s explore how we got to where we are today. After that, we’ll take a moment to consider how the e-liquid industry might evolve from here.

What’s All the Fuss About Nicotine Salt E-Liquid?

To understand how nicotine salt e-liquid might evolve in the future, it’s instructive to know why it has generated such a fuss in the vaping industry to begin with.

Nicotine salt began to pop up in the mid-2010s as a new form of e-liquid developed for small pre-filled pod systems like JUUL and the many clones that followed in its wake.

Very soon after the release of JUUL, devices with refillable pods began to appear.

Naturally, then, the next step was for vape juice companies to begin making bottled nicotine salt e-liquid.

Within a couple of years, it was almost like the entire vaping industry had been divided in half.

You’d walk into a vape shop, and on one side, you’d see the mods and the big bottles of cheap freebase nicotine e-liquid.

On the other side, you’d see the pod systems and the little bottles of expensive nicotine salt vape juice – and that, more or less, is the way things have stayed.

Some of the early marketing language surrounding nicotine salt e-liquid was stretched almost to the point of being factually incorrect.

You’d see companies claiming that nicotine salt is more like the nicotine that occurs naturally in the tobacco leaf.

You’d also see companies claiming that nicotine salt is more satisfying or that it hits the bloodstream more quickly than freebase nicotine.

Those claims helped to keep nicotine salt front and center in the consciousness of the vaping community, but they weren’t really true.

  • Nicotine salt e-liquid is just freebase nicotine e-liquid with an added acid that triggers a chemical reaction, changing the nicotine to a salt. It bears almost no resemblance to the nicotine found in tobacco. In fact, most major cigarette brands actually contain ammonia or other pH modifiers to freebase the nicotine.
  • Freebase nicotine – not nicotine salt – is actually the form of nicotine that hits the bloodstream more quickly. That’s why the major cigarettes contain pH modifiers; freebase nicotine is more bioavailable and gives you more of a nicotine rush.

What is special about nicotine salt e-liquid is that it has a more neutral pH than freebase e-liquid, enabling companies to make higher-strength e-liquids that are completely smooth even though they contain massive amounts of nicotine.

When you’re vaping an e-liquid with a strength of 59 mg/ml, you’d better believe there’s going to be a nicotine rush. You could never achieve a nicotine strength that high with freebase nicotine e-liquid because the harshness would make it impossible to inhale.

For a very small e-cigarette to compete with the nicotine delivery of a tobacco cigarette on a puff-for-puff basis, the e-liquid needs to have a strength around 50 mg/ml. Nicotine salt made it possible for the first time for small e-cigarettes to deliver that level of satisfaction.

Why Are E-Liquid Makers So Determined to Keep Nicotine Salt Expensive?

Did you ever step into a vape shop around 2018 and see a situation like the one described above – with small, pricy bottles of nicotine salt e-liquid crammed next to the pod systems at one side of the store?

Nicotine salt hasn’t really changed at all since then. E-liquid makers seem determined to lock bottle sizes and prices are their current levels, and the reason for that is probably because the e-liquid industry has already seen the bottom fall out of its prices before.

Those high price tags that you see on bottles of nicotine salt e-liquid today are just about the same as what vapers used to pay for 10 ml bottles of freebase nicotine e-liquid back when vaping was new.

As you can imagine, the profit margins enjoyed by e-liquid companies in those days were enviable. Over time, though, vaping devices became more powerful, and people started using more and more e-liquid each day.

Prices in the neighbourhood of $1.00 per ml simply weren’t sustainable, and market forces eventually compelled the e-liquid companies to release their products in larger, less expensive bottles.

Since the vaping community has already shown the e-liquid companies that it is perfectly willing to accept 30 ml as a standard bottle size for nicotine salt vape juice, no company has wanted to be the first to cut its prices – but that could change any time.

Nicotine Salt Can Evolve in Two Ways

So, how will the nicotine salt segment of the e-liquid industry evolve from here? On one hand, it can evolve by not evolving. E-liquid makers can continue enjoying the higher profit margin of nicotine salt, although they’ll have to do so with the knowledge that the nicotine salt segment will probably never become larger than its current size.

Even as more people are continuing to switch from smoking to vaping, existing vapers are trading in their small pod systems for the new pod mods at the same rate.

A significant percentage of those mods are too powerful to work with nicotine salt e-liquid at the nicotine strengths commonly available, so upgrading to a pod mod usually means switching to lower-strength freebase nicotine e-liquid.

There is, however, another way in which the industry can evolve. All it takes is one company that decides to release nicotine salt e-liquid in a wider variety of different strengths and in larger bottles at a lower price per ml.

That event would force all of the other e-liquid companies to follow suit – and the company that does it first will surely pick up a ton of new customers.

The REAL Reason Why Your Vape Coils Don’t Last

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Vape juice tastes better than ever these days, doesn’t it? E-liquid makers have come up with some pretty amazing flavor profiles in the last few years, and today, you can find vape juices that taste almost identical to jelly-filled doughnuts, icy fruit smoothies, frothy cappuccinos – you name it.

Corresponding with the rise in extremely sweet e-liquids, today’s vape coils have adopted new technologies and now generate vapor more efficiently than ever. A current cloud-chasing coil uses multiple mesh strips in tandem to create a heating surface powerful enough to change the weather in your personal space.

So, e-liquids are sweeter than ever, and coils go through vape juice more quickly than ever.

If you’ve been a vaper throughout all of these changes, you’ve probably noticed something else: Your coils burn out more quickly than ever. Sometimes, it feels like the tell-tale burnt sugar taste of a vape coil nearing the end of its life begins to creep in just when you’ve finally finished breaking a new coil in.

Coincidence? Nope – all of these things are directly related.

This is the REAL reason why your vape coils don’t last.

Sucralose Is the Thing That’s Killing Your Vape Coils

At first glance, the video above may not seem to relate directly to vaping. At the beginning of the video, the presenter drops a glowing hot metal ball into a bowl of sucralose, an artificial sweetener sold under the brand name Splenda. The sucralose immediately begins to bubble and darken before finally turning into a mass of black gunk.

You may also notice that almost none of the sucralose vaporizes. There’s no gigantic vapor cloud to be found anywhere.

Now, the next time you start to get that burnt sugar taste when vaping, and the irritation in the back of your throat becomes so annoying that you can’t take it anymore and finally have to replace your coil, take a good look at that coil before throwing it away. It looks pretty much the same as the black gunk in the video, doesn’t it?

That’s because the e-liquid you’re vaping is full of sucralose – and as the video above demonstrates, sucralose doesn’t vaporize. When you heat sucralose, it caramelizes and burns. Your vape coils could last weeks. Instead, they last days – and that’s if you’re lucky. When you vape a sweetened e-liquid, the vapor carries a tiny bit of the sucralose to your palate. The rest of the sucralose stays right where it is: stuck to your coil and slowly – or not so slowly – forming a crust that grows thicker and thicker until it’s eventually all you can taste.

A huge percentage of the mainstream e-liquid sold today is sweetened with sucralose, and sucralose is the reason why your coils aren’t lasting as long as they should.

So, that’s the problem. What’s the solution? Actually, there are a few ways to solve the problem of short coil life – but only one of them doesn’t require you to change anything about the way you vape.

Cleaning Your Gunky Coils Allows You to Reuse Them

Using a coil that’s covered in sucralose residue is an absolutely awful experience, but there is a silver lining. Under the residue, you’ve still got a perfectly good coil. Sucralose is water-soluble, and that means you can restore your coil to like-new performance simply by cleaning it.

Cleaning a gunky coil by hand isn’t a difficult process, but it is time-consuming and requires several hours of on-and-off attention on your part. We’ll explain how to clean your coils in a moment, and if it sounds like too much work, you’ll be glad to know there’s an alternative. The ROBO2020 automatic coil cleaner can clean and dry your coils for you – just add water and turn it on. ROBO2020 isn’t just an easier way to clean your coils; it also delivers far better results than you can achieve by doing the work manually.

If you prefer to do the work manually, put your dirty coils in a heat-proof bowl and fill the bowl with hot water. Keep the coils in the water for several hours, swirling them around periodically to provide agitation. You may also find it helpful to dump the bowl out and refill it when the water gets cold. After several hours of soaking, give the coils a final rinse before leaving them out for a day to dry.

Switching to Unsweetened E-Liquid Can Increase Your Coil Life

So, one way to solve the problem of coil gunk is by cleaning your coils so you can use them again. If you’re open to the idea of trying a different type of e-liquid, though, you should consider switching to unsweetened e-liquid. Although sweetened e-liquids crowd the shelves at most vape shops, e-liquids without sucralose are still out there.

How would you like to prime a coil, throw it into your tank and forget about it? How would you like to vape with absolutely no problems for weeks at a time? That’s the experience you can have with unsweetened e-liquid.

Of course, the reason why you use sweetened e-liquid is that you like sweet flavors. It might surprise you, though, to discover that many vape juices actually taste quite sweet even without sucralose. You’ll also taste those flavors much more clearly if you switch to unsweetened e-liquid because sucralose tends to cover subtler flavors.

Changing Vaping Devices Can Reduce Your E-Liquid Consumption

If you don’t want to go through the work of cleaning your coils and don’t want to change e-liquids, the next best thing that you can do is reduce the amount of e-liquid you use by switching to a device that generates less vapor.

If you switch from a direct-to-lung vaping setup with a mesh coil to a mouth-to-lung pod system, you’re going to use significantly less e-liquid than you do now. You’ll have to increase the nicotine strength of your e-liquid to compensate, of course, but the benefit of using less e-liquid is that your coils will last much longer than they currently do even if you’re still using sweetened e-liquid.

Vaping is Better Than Nicotine Gum

What Are Terpenes & How Do They Affect CBD Vaping?

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Terpenes are natural compounds produced primarily by plants and occasionally by insects. They’re often very strongly scented, and some plants – most notably conifers, flowers, spices, and the cannabis plant – produce them in great quantity.

Pine resin, for example, is extremely rich in terpenes.

The main reason why terpenes have entered the public consciousness recently, though, is because they are extremely important to consumers of high-end cannabis products. Whether you’re a consumer of cannabis flowers or processed products like CBD vape cartridges, terpenes play a major role in your experience. You’re about to learn why.

Why Are Terpenes Important to Cannabis Consumers?

Hemp cultivation is a veritable playground for those who enjoy plant genetics. The cannabis Sativa plant has around 120 identified terpenes, and those terpenes express themselves in different blends and proportions depending on the genetic lineage of a particular hemp strain. Since terpenes have such strong flavors and smells, individual hemp strains have their own distinct flavor profiles. One strain might have a strong note of diesel fuel, while another has a note that tastes a bit like berries. Since the most popular hemp strains have been extensively analyzed by labs, we know what the most prevalent terpenes are in those strains along with the proportions in which those terpenes appear.

Terpenes are also an important part of the CBD vaping industry as they are often used to enhance products like CBD vape cartridges. Crescent Canna, for example, adds specific terpene blends to its CBD vape cartridges to mimic the flavor profiles of well-known hemp strains like Headband OG and Strawberry Cough. As you’re about to learn, terpenes may also offer other benefits in addition to their delicious flavors.

How Are Terpenes Used Outside the Cannabis Industry?

Although the term “terpene” probably didn’t enter your vocabulary until you began reading about cannabis, the fact is that terpenes were probably fairly major parts of your life before then. The characteristic flavors of many plant-based foods – the citrus oils in the zest of a lemon, for example – come from terpenes.

Terpenes are also present in many of the essential oils that we use for perfumery and aromatherapy. The terpene linalool, for instance, gives lavender its characteristic scent – and lavender is one of the most popular ingredients in both of those fields. Vetiver is another popular scent derived from terpenes.

Do you use soaps, lotions, and other cosmetic products scented with essential oils? Those scents come from terpenes. For another practical example of terpenes as a part of everyday life, just look at the ingredients on a container of scented body spray. You’ll almost definitely see both linalool and limonene, among other terpenes.

Terpenes and Aromatherapy

People love the way that many terpenes smell and taste, but those aren’t the only reasons why we use them. Terpenes also have potential health benefits, and those benefits form the basis of aromatherapy. Even if you haven’t explored the world of aromatherapy yourself, it’s probably already a part of your life to a certain extent because everyone is influenced to some degree by the way things smell. Lavender, for instance – with a scent that comes primarily from the terpene linalool – is thought by many to aid in relaxation. That’s why lavender is added to many “relaxing” nighttime bath products and to pillow sachets.

So, does aromatherapy really work? So far, research has produced inconclusive results. It’s hard to conduct a placebo-controlled test on aromatherapy since subjects can easily tell whether they’re smelling the real thing or a placebo. You’ve probably noticed, though, that various scents do affect you in different ways. Most people find linalool relaxing. Limonene – from citrus fruits – tends to produce an energetic or uplifting sensation.

Benefits of Terpenes in Cannabis

If you’ve read any of the medical studies examining the potential benefits of CBD, you’ve no doubt noticed that we are still in the very early stages of understanding cannabis and its potential benefits – and if you think that cannabis research has a long way to go, just wait until you start reading about terpenes. As we already know from the existence of aromatherapy, terpenes definitely do have benefits – or, at least, many people find them beneficial. We are a long way from confirming, however, whether terpenes have any provable medical benefits.

There also hasn’t been any research examining whether it is more beneficial to use terpenes by consuming them – such as in an oral CBD oil enhanced with terpenes – or by inhaling them via a CBD vape cartridge or similar product.

With those things having been said, here are some of the potential benefits of the most common cannabis terpenes.

  • Linalool, as mentioned above, is thought to be one of the most calming terpenes. In addition to the fact that linalool seems to relax the body and promote restful sleep, there is also some evidence suggesting that it reduces inflammation and pain.
  • Do you feel energized when you smell citrus oil? There may be a good reason for that. Researchers have administered limonene to mice and found that it seems to improve symptoms in an animal model of depression.
  • Myrcene has a smell reminiscent of cloves or cardamom and is thought to produce a sedating effect and to reduce pain and inflammation.
  • Caryophyllene smells a bit like pepper or spices and stimulates the body’s endocannabinoid system. It is therefore possible that it may make the body more receptive to cannabinoids or may enhance the effects of the cannabinoids you consume.
  • Pinene, as you might have guessed from the name, smells like pine needles. It is thought to promote alertness and may help to alleviate anxiety.

What Is the Entourage Effect?

Reading the list above, you’ve probably noticed that some of the potential benefits of terpenes are very similar to the potential benefits that researchers have discovered when studying the properties of CBD. Based on that, it should come as no surprise that some people may find CBD more effective when it’s consumed along with the terpenes that one would find naturally in hemp.

The term “entourage effect” is often used within the cannabis community to describe the idea that CBD, terpenes, and other cannabinoids work synergistically with one another to provide a stronger effect than what you’d get from consuming any one of those compounds individually.

The next time you try a CBD vape cartridge from Crescent Canna or another company that adds terpenes to its products, take a moment to enjoy the flavors and scents of some of the most potent compounds in nature. More importantly, though, you should also pay attention to how you feel. You may find that the terpenes are almost as beneficial as the CBD itself.

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Australian Vapers Reduce Nicotine Usage Ahead of Import Ban

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For Australian vapers who rely on imported e-liquid due to the nation’s draconian laws regarding the sale of nicotine, time is nearly up. In just a few months, the Australian government plans to ban all private nicotine imports and force vapers to obtain e-liquid with nicotine from doctors or pharmacies that possess import licenses.

The purpose of this article isn’t to cover the proposed e-liquid import ban in depth; that’s been covered extensively elsewhere. Hopefully, you have already contacted your elected representatives and told them in no uncertain terms that you do not support the ban. In the meantime, though, the wisest thing you can do is proceed as if the ban is definitely happening. After all, if you don’t want to go through the health system to get your e-liquid, you may lose the ability to get vape juice very soon. You should already be stocking up – and if you’re not, this is the time to start.

Many Australian vapers have claimed that they intend to reduce their nicotine consumption as much as possible ahead of the proposed import ban, and if you haven’t thought about reducing your own nicotine intake yet, you should definitely consider it.

Here’s why.

What Does the Import Ban Mean for Australian Vapers?

If you’re an Australian vaper who uses e-liquid with nicotine, here’s what the proposed ban means for you. Presently, you can legally import the e-liquid brands and flavors of your choice – from the vendors of your choice – as long as you have a doctor’s prescription. This falls under Australia’s personal importation scheme for therapeutic goods. Since e-liquid with nicotine isn’t available in Australia except from compounding pharmacies, you’re free to import it from an overseas vendor if a doctor says that it has therapeutic value.

Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt, however, plans to ban the private importation of e-liquid with nicotine due to the lack of government control and the fear that teens will acquire the e-liquid and start vaping. The ban would put a stop to all private e-liquid imports and force vapers to buy vape juice from doctors or pharmacies that have taken the appropriate steps to acquire import licenses.

The import ban means that:

  • You will have no alternative but to obtain a prescription for your e-liquid. Australian law already requires that, but the rule is poorly enforced. Many people don’t bother to get prescriptions because no one is likely to ask for them and because many doctors are unwilling to prescribe e-liquid.
  • When you do get a prescription, you won’t have the level of choice that you presently enjoy. Essentially, you can only use whatever e-liquid your doctor or pharmacy chooses to import. Flavor profiles certainly aren’t likely to be a priority.

The reason why many Australian vapers have decided to start reducing their nicotine consumption is because they don’t want to jump through legal hoops to buy vape juice and aren’t happy about the lack of choice that the ban will entail.

If you can reduce your nicotine consumption, though, you can start stocking up on vape juice now and can continue vaping for a long time before you’ll need to worry about buying more e-liquid. If you really dedicate yourself, you could potentially even get to the point where you’re no longer using nicotine at all. If you do that, you can continue using whatever e-liquid you like because you can get nicotine-free e-liquid locally from Australian vape shops like Ivanna Vape.

Have you decided to stock up on nicotine and start reducing your consumption ahead of the proposed import ban in 2021? Here are two simple ways of ensuring that your supply of nicotine will last as long as possible.

Buy a Pod System and Progressively Reduce Your Nicotine Strength

If you’re currently using a large vape pen or mod with a sub-ohm tank, the first thing that you’re going to want to do is reduce the amount of e-liquid you consume. You can do that by getting a refillable pod system and swapping your low-strength high-VG e-liquid for a higher-strength nicotine salt vape juice.

Nicotine salt e-liquid usually comes in a low strength of around 20-25 mg/ml and a high strength of around 40-50 mg/ml. Since you’re already a full-time vaper, you’ll buy the lower strength; the higher strength is for people who are still trying to quit smoking. If you vape at a natural pace, you’ll consume about the same total amount of nicotine that you do now. Since a pod system generates less vapor than a sub-ohm mod, though, you’ll use significantly less e-liquid.

As soon as you’re used to using your new pod system, reduce the nicotine strength of your e-liquid as quickly as you can without causing discomfort. If you begin this process now, then you should be using very little nicotine – and very little vape juice – by the time the ban hits.

Buy Bulk Nicotine and Mix It With Nicotine-Free Vape Juice

Unless you plan to stop using nicotine entirely by January, you’re going to want to start stocking up on nicotine now. Buying bulk e-liquid is the simplest way of doing that, but it’s far more economical in terms of shipping costs to import a high-strength nicotine base and add it to the nicotine-free e-liquid that you can buy in local vape shops.

There are two types of e-liquid products designed for adding nicotine. Those are:

  • Shortfill e-liquid is a bottle of nicotine-free e-liquid with empty space at the top for one or two nicotine shots. A nicotine shot usually has a size of 10 ml and a nicotine strength of 18 mg/ml. Filling the empty space in a shortfill bottle with 18 mg/ml e-liquid gives you a total nicotine strength of 3 mg/ml.
  • Doublers are half-empty bottles of e-liquid with double the normal concentration of flavor. To use a doubler, you’ll fill the second half of the bottle with the unflavored nicotine base of your choice. The final strength of the e-liquid will be half the strength of the nicotine base.

Simply choose the nicotine-free product that’s the best fit for you and stock up on nicotine for mixing. If you keep your e-liquid usage as low as possible, you can conceivably keep vaping for years before you’ll need to worry about complying with Australia’s e-liquid import ban.

best-vampire-vape-juice-flavors-1

Why a Great Battery Charger Is One of the Best Investments a Vaper Can Make

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If you have a vaping device with removable batteries, that gives you the luxury of charging your batteries with an external battery charger if you like. Many vapers opt not to do that, though, because virtually all vaping devices also have USB ports for charging. Why would you bother buying a standalone battery charger when you can charge your vaping device just by connecting it to your computer? For that matter, why spend the money that premium battery chargers usually cost when a free USB cable can do the same job?

You’re about to learn why a great battery charger from a vape shop like Blackout Vapors is a much better investment than you might realize. In fact, it’s one of the best investments a vaper can make. Here’s why.

Vape While Charging

Most modern vaping devices don’t support pass-through charging. Even if a device does allow you to vape during charging, the repeated charging and discharging is bad for the battery and can reduce its longevity. If you have a standalone charger, you can charge one pair of batteries while vaping with another. It’s better for the batteries, and it also means that you don’t have to stop vaping while your batteries charge.

Better Battery Longevity

If you’re using two pairs of batteries rather than one, it’s better for the longevity of the batteries. That’s not just because you’re dividing the usage among twice as many batteries; it’s also because you’re giving your batteries a break between charge-discharge cycles.

Safer Battery Charging

You’ve probably heard that any lithium-ion battery has a small chance of overheating during charging or use. You may have even heard that a few vape battery explosions have occurred over the years. Thermal incidents with lithium-ion batteries are extremely rare, but they’re even rarer with high-quality batteries and chargers. Now, if you’re using a mod that costs $50 – and you can buy a battery charger for around $50 – what do you suppose is the value of the charging components in the $50 mod?

A high-quality battery charger provides the safest possible way to charge your vape batteries. That’s not just because of the quality of the charger itself; it’s also because of the safety features that a good charger offers. These are just a few of the safety features that you can expect a top-quality standalone battery charger to have.

  • Individual balancing and monitoring of each battery cell
  • Better heat dissipation during charging
  • Flame-retardant materials
  • Temperature monitoring
  • Short circuit detection
  • Monitoring for battery cell degradation
  • Monitoring of the battery’s internal resistance

Ability to Charge Multiple Battery Types

One of the greatest things about owning a really good battery charger is that it’s more than just a tool for charging your vaping batteries. Many battery chargers have the ability to automatically detect the chemistry and type of any connected battery. In that way, a good charger isn’t just for charging basic 18650 vaping batteries. It can also charge 20700 or 21700 cells if you decide to upgrade to a larger vaping device one day.

If you happen to own AA, AAA, C or D batteries using the NiMH or NiCad chemistries, a good battery charger can usually handle those as well. Why have a million different cables, wires and chargers around the house when you can handle all of your batteries with just one device?

Choose Your Charging Speed

When you charge a device through your computer, you don’t get to choose the charging speed. That’s negotiated via the USB power delivery protocol between your computer and the device’s charging circuitry. When you have a standalone battery charger, though, you can enjoy much finer control over how your batteries charge.

If you don’t want to change anything about how your batteries charge, you can simply charge them with a 1-amp current. If you do that, your batteries will charge exactly as they do now. If you want to reduce the heat that your batteries give off during charging, though, a good battery charger will let you reduce the charging speed to a 0.5-amp current. Heat-related stress is the top factor that reduces a battery’s longevity. Although reducing the charging current will roughly double the amount of time that your batteries take to charge, it may also mean that your batteries will last significantly longer before you need to replace them.

On the other hand, you may be the type who doesn’t care about battery longevity. You’d rather spend as little time as possible waiting for your batteries to charge, even if that means you’ll need to replace the batteries more often. If that’s the case, today’s high-end battery chargers can provide fast-charging currents of up to 3 amps. Before using this feature, though, be warned that fast charging can cause batteries to get fairly hot. Be certain that your batteries support fast charging before using this feature.

Recover Some Dead Batteries

When a lithium-ion battery reaches 4.2 volts, it’s fully charged – and if you’re new to this type of battery, you might assume that the battery is dead when it reaches 0.0 volts. That, however, isn’t how lithium-ion batteries work. Your vaping device will actually tell you that your batteries are dead when the cells reach about 3.0-3.3 volts. That’s true of all devices using lithium-ion batteries.

Let’s suppose, though, that you use a mechanical mod. A mech mod has no internal electronics and doesn’t monitor the voltage of your battery. If your vaping device doesn’t monitor battery voltage, it’ll let you continue using your battery until the power level dips well below 3.0 volts.

At extremely low voltages, a lithium-ion battery can undergo permanent chemical changes that will damage the cell and may present a fire risk. For that reason, a lithium-ion battery enters a sort of “sleep mode” at this stage. In sleep mode, the battery will read 0.0 volts when connected to a standard charger, and the charger will not attempt to charge the cell.

One of the money-saving features you’ll enjoy with a good battery charger is that some chargers can actually force dead batteries out of sleep mode and revive them. Once a battery has been in sleep mode, it’s likely that its capacity will be somewhat diminished. However, having a lower-capacity battery is better than having a battery that doesn’t function at all. Once you’ve revived a few dead batteries, a high-quality battery charger essentially pays for itself.